So you finished setting up your blog using my guide, or maybe you figured it out on your own. Congratulations, you’re now one of the few people willing to publish something for the world to see! So what’s next?
Let’s talk about what to do after you publish your first blogpost.
You can of course, go on and publish another blogpost, and then a third and continue. There are no hard set rules about what you need to do as a new blogger. But I do have some recommendations based on experience.
Do any one of these things and you will be in good shape.
Write Your About Page
In a similar way that you wrote your first blogpost, go to the Pages section and write a page that talks about you and the basis of your new blog. The About page is the 2nd most viewed page on your blog after your front page. It should tell people a story about the blog and or tell them what they can expect moving forward.
Feel free to add some contact information or links to your social media profiles so that people can stay in touch with you.
To create your about page follow these simple steps:
1. Visit your Dashboard and click on the Pages section on the left.
2. Click on the Add New button at the top.
From the Dashboard look for the Pages section and click on it. Then Add New.
2b. Alternative method: You can also use the +New link at the top of your dashboard and go directly to create a new page.
This is a faster way of creating a new page or post
3. Give the page title a title of “About”
4. Type in the text you want to add to your about page, then click Publish.
Fill in Title and the body of the page like a blogpost, then publish!
You have just created your About page! You can go back to edit and ad a photo or a video if you would like.
Add a Video Blogpost
One easy way to add new content to your blog is by sharing a video with your audience. This could be a video you created or a video you found on Youtube or Vimeo and it’s something you want to share with your readers. Your new blog is ready for videos and it is very easy to add them to your blogposts.
Simply, copy the address of the video and add it to your blogpost. Within a few seconds, you will see that WordPress will replace the address and turn it into a video.
WordPress will automatically make the video playable by your visitors.
Customize the Menu on Your Blog
Most themes for WordPress have at least one menu location. The menu is where you can control the easy to access sections of your blog. It is very easy to change that.
One thing you may want to add to your menu is a link to the About page, or the Contact page.
1. To access the menu system, go to your Dashboard.
2. Below the Pages section on the left, you’ll find Appearance, click on it.
3. Click on the Menus link and this will open the menu manager.
How to find the Menus in your blog
If you already have a menu, you’ll see the Menu Name and the Menu Structure below that.
4. If you don’t have a menu yet, click on “create a new menu at the top”
Then you can add the stuff you want in your menu by clicking on the boxes. Notice the “About” page highlighted in the screenshot below.
5. Check the box for the page and click on Add to Menu.
You will then see the page added to the Menu Structure.
6. Make sure you assign the menu to a location in your theme under the “Theme Locations” section, then click on Save Menu.
7. You can re-arrange any of the menu items by dragging and dropping them in the desired order. You can also add links to categories, tags or a blogpost directly if you want to.
The WordPress menu manager lets you add and customize your menus easily
When you first start your blog, you may not have a lot of things you can put into your menu but with time you’ll be able to create sections so you will be visiting the menu manager quite a bit while you customize your blog.
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